Big Data in 'in' - its a fashionable topic, its 'cool' and exciting.  But is it useful? What are the applications where it will 'make a difference' - on a global level. Well, I've been doing some work in Agri-business recently.... and one useful trend has been to make data available (on yields, prices and

I have been doing a little work recently in relation to productivity and performance measures.  The thought struck me after trying to construct appropriate measures for a particular organisation in a particular situation that the measures we use are not as important as the fact that we use measures to track progress against strategy and

I was looking at a PowerPoint presentation the other day (not one of mine) and I thought "What a great job this person has done of making a complex issue understandable."    It reminded me that we often have two important, overlapping roles - acting as technical experts to solve problems and make improvements ...

A number of you sent me comments to try and unpick the (UK) productivity mystery I referred to in last week's post.  Some of these were backed up by serious analysis. Yet, after reading them all (which i did - gladly) I remain confused - and the mystery remains unresolved. It just made me glad

British productivity was growing steadily if slowly in the years before the financial crisis struck but it’s now some 16% below its pre-crisis level. The Bank of England has published a paper in their  quarterly bulletin of economic research, examining the competing explanations for the productivity puzzle and has a stab at estimating how much

Many countries have productivity centres to advise their government of productivity and related issues. But do they do any good? Is productivity something that can be shaped and steered by government? I would say 'YES' from my experience in the UK - but not always in ways that might be expected. Twenty or thirty years

Most of the time we get things right.... at least if we have the skills to accomplish what we set out to do  Occasionally, though, we slip on a banana skin - and we get something wrong. A defect in Lean terms (one of the 7 wastes). It is almost impossible to avoid all defects

I have been in the productivity' business' for longer than I care to remember. Sometimes, I feel that the longer I am in the business, the less I know - or the less I feel confident to declare. I started off as a 'work study engineer' - great training, but I soon realised that studying

As a productivity professional, I am used to counting every penny/cent spent and justifying the expenditure by the benefits it brings - its (perhaps tiny) contribution to the aims of the organisation. Sometimes, however, firms decide to spend money on things which have no direct utility - corporate art, charitable giving, etc.  Can such expenditure

Consultants usually specialise in .... productivity, quality, organisational development, innovation, or some other 'improvement' topic. This suggests that the business world is full of tools and techniques that must be selected carefully according to the kind of situation - and kind of problem - being considered. However my experience is that most of the tools